Eleanor of Aquitaine
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Eleanor of Aquitaine was the daughter of a provincial Duke in France. Twice she married Kings and had many children, although she outlived most of them and several grandchildren, living into her ninth decade, suffering annulment and internal exile. Two of her sons became King of England and, through John “Sansterre”, she is the ancestress of…
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THE MISSING PRINCES-LOOKING IN LINCOLNSHIRE & DEVON
“Missing Princes Project”, “Princes”, Coldbridge, Devon, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Brittany, Fotheringhay, Grimsby, Henry III, Henry VII, Henry VIII, John, John Evans, Lincolnshire, Mary Stuart, Old Sarum, Philippa Langley, Richard III, Robert More, Sandra heath wilson, Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset, windowsPhilippa Langley has recently been on the road with ‘The Missing Princes Project’ making inquiries in Lincolnshire as to any local legends or folklore (such stories can often hold a tiny grain of folk memory) relating to King Richard or the two boys. Interestingly, author Sandra Heath Wilson in her novels has the princes hidden…
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What do Matilda and Margaret, Eleanor and Elizabeth, plus two Henrys, add up to…?
“Beauforts”, Antioch, Catherine de Roet, Crusades, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth of York, Fair Rosamund Clifford, Gerald of Wales, Henry I, Henry II, Henry VII, John of Gaunt, Lady Margaret Beaufort, Lancastrians, Matilda, Raymond of Poitiers, Richard III, Robert of Gloucester, Shakespeare, Stephen, The Lion in Winter, Viscount Welles, YorkistsTo my mind, it adds up to two very similar situations that are two centuries apart. Let us begin in the 12th century. On his deathbed, Henry I of England named as his successor his only surviving child, his daughter, the Empress Matilda. He obliged the nobility to agree. They reneged, of course. A woman…
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May 1 has just gone past–a date known in ancient Britain as the Feast of Beltaine, the ‘Fires of Bel (the Shining One)’. Of all the old important pre-Christian dates, this is the one that the Church was never able to Christianise in any obvious way, retainings its traditions of merriment, dancing and bawdiness right…
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Unexpected news has reached us from Saumur in the Loire valley. The local wine growers have decided to commission a top artist to honour Richard with a “reclining statue” (possibly an effigy) in nearby Fontevraud Abbey. The Royal Abbey of Our Lady of Fontevraud is the burial place of some of Richard’s most famous ancestors:…
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